After a decade in production, Allison Berg's The Dog will have its home town premiere at the New York Film Festival. The film will be shown Tuesday, 10/1 in the Francesa Beale Theater @ 8:15pm
Tuesday, 10/8 in the Howard Gilman Theater @ 6:30pm. Tickets go on sale to the general public on September 8th at http://www.filmlinc.com.

The Dog is a feature-length documentary about John Wojtowicz, the real-life bank robber behind the film Dog Day Afternoon. In August 1972, John robbed a bank in Brooklyn to pay for the sex-change operation of his lover, Ernie. Things didn't go as planned, and John and his collaborator Sal Naturile found themselves surrounded by the New York City Police Department, the FBI and hundreds of spectators. What was supposed to last only a few minutes became a 14-hour standoff, involving nine hostages and unfolding live on television. The story would later reach an even broader audience through Al Pacino's unforgettable performance in Sidney Lumet's classic 1975 film.

Through John's personal photographs and letters, as well as incredible archival footage of the actual bank robbery and the day's aftermath, the film reveals an outrageous, unapologetic, hilarious and perplexing man who chose to live his life by his own rules. Reality and fiction, celebrity and infamy, memoir and myth — the lines get blurred as John Wojtowicz shares the tales of his unusual life.

Director/Producer Allison Berg is an award-winning filmmaker who directs and produces feature-length documentary films and television documentary series. Allison's first film, Witches in Exile, focused on women accused of witchcraft and banished to remove villages in Northern Ghana. The film premiered at the 2004 SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature Film. Witches in Exile has screened at festivals throughout the world, and has both international television and educational distribution.

Berg has received grants from such prestigious foundations as the Soros Documentary Fund, New York State Council of the Arts, Eastman Fund, Wellspring Foundation and the Women in Film Foundation. Recent television credits include Supervising Producer and Director on documentary series and specials for broadcasters such as Sundance Channel, MTV, Oxygen and A&E.

NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.